Kleph's Top 100 Albums

[kleph]

Well, we've had quite a few favorite record threads, deserted island CD threads and general bands-I-think-are-swell threads. The most recent one made me think about what actually are the best of the best in the world of kleph.

I was a college DJ back in the 1980s and quickly found there were whole vistas of music beyond Huey Lewis and Animotion (not that i hated everything those two bands did, of course). every week i had a library of several thousand records to peruse through and find the gems. it was great.

pretty quickly i found a vein of music that has been close to my heart ever since. a lot of what you will see on this list reflects this era of my musical experience, but i've always tried to keep expanding my horizons.

roughly, this is a list of my favorite "rock" albums. there are a few exceptions but i didn't feel putting things like Miles Davis, "Kind of Blue" on this list was totally accurate. i love that record but it's not part of my regular listening oeuvre - i go through phases where i'll spend a few weeks listening to jazz or something and then return to my staple classics.

and there are some glaring omissions due to the fact this is a list of albums rather than singles. good example, The Who. i love the who and think they are one of the most important bands ever, but none of their albums sticks out for me - typically it is individual songs.

so what makes the list? albums, records and whole CD's. for most of the entries here it will be an album i typically listen through the whole way through whenever i put it on. in extreme cases i don't even know the names of the songs. they also are records that really struck a chord with me, that typify some part of my life to the point that listening to them puts me right back in that moment.

in organizing the list i realized how organic the process really is. i've ammended it numerous times in the two weeks it took to draw it up and i expect there will be some more of that to come. it's assembled in groups of 10, i feel each set of ten is pretty much correctly placed but it's tough to individually rank things beyond that.

that said, the top 25 took minutes to write and hasn't changed at all. i feel those are pretty much set in stone.

i plan to put a new entry in each day until the list is done. feel free to comment, suggest and deride but remember it's my list, nothing more.

[kleph]

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The B-52's - Whammy!

The last of the "dark" B-52's albums and the most professional of the bunch. It's perky and upbeat musically but when you listen to the lyrics it can get kind of disturbing (and what's that white stuff on the floor there on the cover?). I have to break this baby out every spring just to get in the right mindset. The 52's had a lot of good records - Wild Planet is a damn close second - but there is something about the song "Legal Tender" that gets me every time.

[kleph]

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Johnny Cash - Live at Folsom Prison

One of the greatest live albums ever recorded. I remember listening to this one as a child cause it was one of a handfull of my father's records I liked. The songs appear other places more technically polished but the sheer emotion of performing before the inmates at Folsom Prison give this record a crackling energy the studio versions can't match. You really get a feeling of why this man was considered so great back then when you hear this.

[kleph]

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The The - Soul Mining

Somewhere, in the midst of the plastic wonderland of the 1980's, a musician created an amazing work that no-one knew was worth a damn. Matt Johnson's Soul Mining sounded like a lot of the crap that jammed the airwaves but when you listened to the music you could hear something different, and when you paid attention to the lyrics, you could hear the voice of someone talking about things that mattered. I once dated a girl who had to hear 'Uncertain Smile" at least once every week... I'm still not sure why I never married her...

[kleph]

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Throwing Muses - Hunkpapa

This is my Theory: Someone put something in the Boston water supply in the mid-1980's that started a creative explosion in the music scene. Some of the most dynamic, thoughful and exquisite musicians of the past two decades hark from Beantown and the Throwing Muses are one of the best. This album is uneven compared to their other works which explains the lower-than-expected ranking but "Devil's Roof" and "Dizzy" are two of my favorite songs ever i still catch myself singing the chorus of the latter for no apparent reason.

[kleph]

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Lloyd Cole - Don't Get Weird on Me Babe

Cole had been a stalwart of the indie scene for quite some time when this album came out in the early 1990s but somehow he crystalized all the best elements of his work on this record. Sort of a lounge singer of the alternative set, his Sinatra-esque singing style worked well in the introspective subject matter but somehow he always kept his pop sensiblity. Another plus for this album is that Matthew Sweet and Richard Lloyd play extensively throughout.

[kleph]

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The English Beat - Special Beat Service

There really aren't enough superlatives to explain how great this band was. They had a unique life-affirming sound that has never been matched by anyone. "I Confess," "End of the Party" and "Save it for Later" are the acme of what this band was capable of. The only reason this album falls this far down on my list is there was an inordinate amount of filler on this disk. Bonus tidbit: the 12" version of "Rotating Head" is the chase music from the end of Ferris Buller's Day Off.

[kleph]

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The Happy Mondays - Pills n' Thrills and Bellyaches

A groovy fun time courtesy the lads from Manchester. One of a wave of bands that burst from this city in the early 1990s and probably the one with the best sense of humor. The allure of the sheer hedonism of it all is restrained by a sense of assured musicianship which keeps the thing from dissolving into nonsense. I have to throw this disk on once every few months just to go back to the time when it was my pre-going-out-to-the-clubs music.

[kleph]

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The Pixies - Trompe Le Monde

The Pixies were always about power. The early albums were an amazing can-it-hold-together-as-it-hurdles-toward-the-finish-line power while the later albums were a sleek-and-fast-as-a-NASCAR-entry-with-the-inhibitor-plates-pulled-off kind of power. And this was the extreme example of the last. Somehow, we all knew this was the end of the road for this incredible band but there was a sheer joy to the effort that even the first few records couldn't match.

[kleph]

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Husker Du - Warehouse Songs and Stories

It's hard to understand how a band that was so loud and abrasive could somehow mold that dissonance into a beautiful pop tapestry of sound. Versions of the technique, so unique from what anyone else was doing at the time, it repeated endlessly today. It's damn tough to decide which of the Husker's albums would make this list but I went with the sentimental favorite.

[kleph]

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Love and Rockets - Earth, Sun, Moon

While Bauhaus will forever stand as an icon for alternative music, it took this transmorgofication of the band to create a unique sound that could grab you by the balls and make you pay attention. This album threw an entire new world at your head and made you like it and it was groovy as the beejesus the whole time. You will live your whole life and never be as cool as this record.

[kleph]

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James - Laid

There is little about this band to not like. Pretty much from the start they were making music that was head and shoulders above everyone else. But Laid was something special. The snappy urgency of the title track pulled you in but the moody and introspective songs that predominate on the album get under your skin forever. A group of my friends (female) once decided that this was, "one of the sexiest albums ever recorded."

[kleph]

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U2 - Achtung Baby

Nothing is more irritating that the unctious U2 fan. You know, that asshole that lavishly obsesses over every aspect of the band and their music and won't hear a word critical about them even though it's clear a bunch of the albums were 60 percent filler for two or three great songs. I hated that guy. I hated U2 because of that guy. I hated Achtung Baby before it came out because of that guy. I was wrong. Waaaay wrong.

[kleph]

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Scruffy the Cat - Tiny Days

Another of the great forgotten bands from Boston. Scruffy the Cat rocked hard but had a sense of fun that made it worth the layer of sweat you were gar-on-teed to produce if you went to see them live. This band laid the groundwork for the rockabilly revival that happened in the 90s but they did it oh-so-much better. There isn't a bad song on the record but, sadly it's brutally out of print and hard as hell to find nowadays.

[kleph]

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Ryan Adams - Heartbreaker

When the great alt-country band Whiskeytown broke up most of us thought it was the death of a singluar voice in music. It was downright shocking when lead singer and songwriter Ryan Adams came out with his first solo album that was mature, thoughtful and the next logical step musically. After the lost Whiskeytown album Pneumonia was released it all made more sense but Heartbreaker was a testament to a great songwriter coming into his own.

[kleph]

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Beck - Odelay

When Mellow Gold came out it was hard to see Beck as anything more than a pretty good novelty act. "Loser" had gimmick written all over it but the rest of the album was surprisingly good. The came Odelay and all bets were off. This is one of the very very few albums critically lauded by everyone that lived up to the hype. And, more than Beck's other albums, this one has really held up almost a decade later. It also has one of my favorite lines ever: "I'm the enchanted wizard of rythm."

[kleph]

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The Dandy Warhols - Come Down

An absolutely glorious slab of hedonistic fun. This record has it all: infectious pop songs, funky improv songs, menacing grunge songs, straight forward rock songs, hell, it's even got a more-blur-than-blur song. And how could you not love a band whose lead singer pines for nothing less than "a girl as cool as Kim Deal?" All this and bassist Zia will pop her top at the drop of a hat - see 'em live if you don't believe me.

[kleph]

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Game Theory - The Bigshot Chronicles

When this first came out back in 1986 I thought it had a couple of good songs but the whiny vocals of Scott Miller got on my nerves. So I put it in the stack and forgot about it for years. But, one day, I pulled it out again and was totally blown away. Sure Miller's vocals were irritating at first but every song is a rock solid pop staple. The songwriting is just simply excellent. All this and a great cover of "Linus and Lucy" too.

[kleph]

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The Breeders - Pod

The emergence of this band was absolutely unexpected but a blessing one could barely believe. Tanya Donnelly from Throwing Muses and Kim Deal from the Pixies on one stage - be still my beating heart. And the record itself was a stunner. Intricately written with the unique musicianship of the members it stuck with you even though you had no idea why.

[kleph]

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Superchunk - Here's Where the Strings Come In

The little band from Chapel Hill, N.C. that did good. A part of the late 80's DIY movement punk begat, these guys stayed true to their vision and never sold out as a result this is a band where you can really see how their music has constantly evolved. This 1995 offering bridges the raw intensity of the early albums and the thoughfull professionalism of the later. As a result it has some of the best parts of both but it's also a bit uneven. "Hyper Enough" would also be the theme song for the TV show about my life.

[kleph]

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The Soup Dragons - Lovegod

There were some excellent bands that came out of England in the early 90s and there were some horrible ones as well. The Soup Dragons were neither. They were an OK band that happened at precisely the right time with precisely the right record. Lovegod nailed the groovy pseudo-hippy feel that washed up from the far shores along with all those kids from Manchester. This was an album to do drugs to. AND it had a Mendlebrot Set for cover art - Beat that, baby.

[kleph]

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The Police - Regatta de Blanc

Remember those band buttons people used to cover the collar of their jackets with back in the 80s? One side of my Member's Only was dedicated to The Police. Regatta had a strange approach full of equal parts enuii, existentalism and slow-burn coolness that twisted my head around in ways I never expected or ever recovered from. And damn if there is a bad song on the record. I blew through at least a dozen cassettes of this bad boy before they invented CDs.

[kleph]

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The Faces - Good boys... when they're asleep.

I knew about The Faces for a long time but, for some reason, I never got around to picking up their stuff until a few years ago. BIG mistake. This is Rock and Roll at the height of it's sloppy, beautiful, hedonistic and anarchic best. If you see that bloated papish parody of himself Rod Stewart has become it's hard to understand how he got so big. This is how. The man could sing. Period. And I can only wonder at what point Ron Wood decided he wasn't getting laid enough being in The Rolling Stones so he had to join a band with Stewart.

[kleph]

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Pavement - Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain

In the mid-1990's, Pavement was the critics darling you couldn't stand. Everyone put them on their super-duper-band-that-will-save-music-from-the-heathen-toads list and it got to be boring. To me they were too disjointed and annoying to even be really listenable. Until this album came out. The songwriters in the group came forward and made this album a wonderful revelation - it was nothing less than a new approach for alternative music in the era of grunge and it's hoary ilk. The band went back to it's annoying ways after this but Crooked Rain was definitely a keeper.

[kleph]

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Jim Carroll Band - Catholic Boy

I read a review of this album once that said just when you think every song that could be written about New York has been recorded, somebody comes along and shows you a whole other way of looking at the city. Jim Carroll certainly did that. This is a hallmark post-punk album that keeps the angst and irritation but hangs it on a true poet's insight and powerful songwriting skill. Best known for the anthemic "People Who Died" there really isn't a bad song on the disk.

[kleph]

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Matthew Sweet - Girlfriend

First time I saw this guy my best buddy turned to me and said, "I didn't know Neil Young had a son." Which surprised me because 1) I had never thought about it and 2) he was 100 percent right. Sweet did a number of albums trying to cash in on the college-boy pop of the late 1980s before saying "Screw it," turning up his amplifiers and letting it all hang out. The result was "Girlfriend." It drips with irony and pessimistic resolve but damn the guitars do wail. Partly because Television alum Richard Lloyd and former Voidod Robert Quine have backup duties. All this and Tuesday Weld too.

[kleph]

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Camper Van Beethoven - Key Lime Pie

After their first big-label album this band lost one of it's founding members Jonathan Segal and most of us thought that was the end of a great original voice in alternative music. Instead, these addled freaks from Van Nuys got a new violinist and went an entirely different direction and everyone hated it... but me. I listened to this CD endlessly that summer and it was a revelation each and every time. It doesn't have the quirkiness of the earler records by the group but there is a soulful poetry to the album most of us didn't expect at the time.

[kleph]

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The Minutemen - Double Nickles on the Dime

When the rage and angst of punk crested and ebbed back into the collective id where it came the next question was what to do with the heaping helping of self empowerment it gave people. Mostly we got crap. But then there were bands like the Minutemen. This was the first real thinking man's punk band. Not artists in the sense of the Talking Heads but straight ahead musicians who wanted the music and the message to achieve one thing - get the audience to think for themselves. Their musical style was an amalgamation of every thing you can think of filtered through a blue collar ethos. And this album was the epitome of all that. And you know what? The point was you can do it too. Or, as Mike Watt sings on the record, "This band could be your life."

[kleph]

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Crowded House - Together Alone

You knew it was coming, it was only a question of when. The last of the Crowded House albums is one of the most consistent the band produced and has some of their most powerful songs as well. For years I didn't know the name of any of the songs on this album because I never listened to it except all the way through every time. I'd trot out the reason I love every song but I'm sure you know them already. So why not break this bad boy out today and give it another listen. I promise, it's as good today as the day you first heard it.

[kleph]

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The Police - Outlandos d'Amour

There is just something about this record that summed up the horrible glory of my teenage years. The songs surge forward with that same excited joy you got when you finally saw your first naked girl up close and real. And it also nailed down that anxious longing of staring at the ceiling of your bedroom waiting for the day it would happen. But most of all this album was alive and you could feel it in every song. The song "Roxanne" has been played into the ground but it still sounds drop dead perfect every time you hear it come up on this CD.

[kleph]

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Superchunk - Come Pick Me Up

When I first got this CD I was very let down. It wasn't the crunchy Superchunk I grew up with and loved. I shelved it and threw in an older album and went my merry way but I was driving to Phoenix once and this was all I had in my car. It took me three months to get it out of the CD player. There is a maturity to the songwriting that doesn't come out in the first listen and the music is crafted very much to the topic of each song. Overall this is the band's most complete work and probably the one their career will be judged by.

[kleph]

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The Lyres - Lyres, Lyres

Jeff Conelly's band The Lyres have been heralded as the greatest garage rock band of all time and this album is where the rubber meets the road. This band took the raw from the genre, threw away the amateur and turned the amps onto 11. It's layered with enough wah-wah pedals, vox organ and proto-60s riffs to make just about anyone start moving their groove thing. Every song is a gem and "She Pay's My Rent" might be the most heartrending breakup song ever written. There is only one way to play this baby and that is LOUD. And by LOUD i mean play it so loud that the cat goes deaf and the grass dies outside the window.

[kleph]

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Wire Train - In a Chamber

An absolute left field pick that I kept trying to push further down the list but couldn't every time I put the CD on to give it a new listen. The music very much has that 80s feel but that's about it. The songwriting is superb and the melodies stick in your head long after you heard them last. "I'll do You" is one of those songs that will just appear in my head for no reason and I'll be compelled to go find the album and listen to it again. A sentimental fave for me.

[kleph]

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The Velvet Underground - The Velvet Underground

I'll be the first to admit that while I venerate this band highly, a lot of their stuff can be grating to the extreme. This album is the antidote for that. It's the acme of the lyric beauty this band was capable of creating. The songs are immaculately concieved, composed and performed. There is the lurching meloncholy of "Pale Blue Eyes," the rollicking inertia of "What Goes On" and the starkly glorious "I'm Set Free." Reed and Co. are best known from the pop masterpieces like "Sweet Jane" but this album are the depths beneath most people never get a chance to dive into.

[kleph]

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The Jazz Butcher - Illuminate

The last of the Jazz Butcher's great run of albums but far from the least. The introspection remains but there is a strange sense of hope rather than bemused skepticism that marks many of the band's works. But, fear not, the pristine guitar work of the Butcher and biting wit to his lyrics are very much in evidence. This is an excellent introduction to the band for the unitiated. It also has the only reference to fuzzy perydactils ever placed in a rock song.

[kleph]

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Nine Inch Nails - The Downward Spiral

I remember being blown away by Pretty Hate Machine when it came out and have never understood why "Head Like a Hole" didn't breakout like "Smells Like Teen Spirit." But, relistening to the first album with a decade of perspective leaves one less than overwhelmed. The Downward Spiral, on the other hand, blisters the listening as well as it did when unleashed in 1994. The album teeters on the edge of anarchy and, rather than becoming a dischordant mess, it is instead tempered by the fury. It's a true masterpiece and the power of the individual songs is evidenced by Johnny Cash's recent cover of "Hurt."

[kleph]

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Lou Reed - New Sensations

This is not Lou Reeds best record but its the one nearest and dearest to my heart. The first time I heard the title track I had to find out who this guy was and what the hell he was singing about. But the album is one of his strongest in terms of straightforward songwriting - holding little of the sentimental and bogus experimental crap he has delved in since the 1980s. It is as straightforward a record as he has ever put out an, as a result, one of the most sincere.

[kleph]

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The Buzzcocks - Love Bites

If the Sex Pistols were punk's Beatles then the Buzzcocks were their Kinks. They were the angry young men from Britain who, despite being pissed off enough to create the loud, fast rules ethos, they always knew the song was the most important thing. This record holds the evervescent "Ever Fallen in Love?" but that is only one facet of it's glory. Every song is a poem of fury and every lyric is alive with the heat of the moment. This is a record that grabs you by the testicles but makes you scream on key as they do.

[kleph]

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The Throwing Muses - House Tornado

This album came entirely out of left field and knocked me for a loop. I was no way prepared for what these women from Massachusetts had created. The music is amazingly catching but in a twisted offbeat way. The lyrics are a strange distorted poetry that leaves the lyrics resounding in your head and the often disturbing meanings settle into your thoughts to resurface when you least expect. It was a refreshing new voice and completely original when it arrived and it's no less a revelation today.

[kleph]

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Elvis Costello and the Attractions - This Year's Model

A powerful voice issuing it's most urgent clarion call. You wan't to know why this guy is important? This is the reason. Costello and his bandmates followed up the impeccable My Aim is True with nothing less than a masterpiece. Every song is a livid living testament to a band at the height of it's powers behind a songwriter of rare skill. There just ain't a bad song on this disk. And with the Rhino Records re-release you get a feast of stripped down alternative versions that only prove the level of songwriting in evidence here. I especially adore the take of "Green Shirt," hands down my favorite Costello song (although the original version is, regretably, not on this record)

[kleph]

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Robyn Hitchcock - Eye

The world is a much stranger place than you ever imagined. In fact, we spend most of our lives being told not to pay attention to the strangeness and, instead, enjoy the claustrophobic comfort of conformity. Then there is Robyn Hitchcock who constantly keeps nudging you to start noticing the strange and bizarre nature of this world and, accept it for it's beauty. To quote the man himself; "We are all deviants, all alone, and all peculiar. This flies in the face of mass marketing, but I'm sticking with it." Many of Hitchcock's albums brim over with the absurd oddities but Eye is an even keeled work. The impeccable songwriting and pristine guitar work are a perfect counterpoint to the disturbing revelations of the lyrics. Listen to this record and look at the world a different way tomorrow.

[kleph]

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INXS - Shabooh Shoobah

This was the first album I ever bought on the strength of the video. I literally stepped out of the house after seeing the video for "Don't Change" on MTV and walked to the mall to buy this. It wasn't the cool look of the band (they didn't really have that yet), it wasn't the impressiveness of the video (it's just them singing in a warehouse) it was because this was one freaking great song. And the rest of the album was just as good. This is a very dark record with an irrepressable pop energy that should be at odds but somehow work to make the album more powerful. While they still turned out good records after they became rock stars, this was a creative apogee they never matched again.

[kleph]

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Spiritualized - Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space

An album of astounding scope and vision. You don't listen to this album, you experience it. It's complex songs build and break in crescendos of emotion. The multiple layers of melody, harmony, voices, instruments and god knows what else wash over you bringing home the intensely personal message of each song. And as the power of each song ebbs the single melancholy voice of Jason Pierce strikes with that much more power delivering lyrics of simple stark beauty. Pierce can be an irritating overbearing artistic savant but, in this case, his over-the-top approach is spectacularly realized.

[kleph]

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The Plimsouls - Everywhere at Once

That the Plimsouls never made it big is one of the greatest crime's of the 1980s. Pretty much everyone knows them for their song (and cameo) in the movie Valley Girl, "A Million Miles Away" but almost no-one knows anything else about them. That song is only where this album picks up and these Los Angeles proto-punkers havea lot more they want to address on this album. I always liked this band - their powerful guitar sound, their crafty songwriting and the sheer emotion they put into every song - but after living in the morass of Southern California I really understood the asinine conformity in this version of paradise they were railing against. An only Paul Westerberg could write a heart wrenching love song better than Peter Case.

[kleph]

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Underworld - Second Toughest in the Infants

While techno as a genre is an incredibly expressive form of music it is remarkably difficult to translate that onto a record. Most tend to come off as repetitive and, eventually, boring in comparison to seeing it live. But Underworld somehow found a way to fuse the free-form experimentalism with just enough structure to create a great album. This record not only provides the vibrant energy of this band's work, it's a solid testament to the genre. The depth and power of this style of music comes through on every track. (well, all that and I had to put it on the list or Utope would freak out on me.)

[kleph]

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The Old 97's - Too Far To Care

A great album that doesn't straddle the fence between country and rock - its standing on the highest fencepost between bluegrass and punk screaming at the top of it's lungs. I remember these guys when they were still hanging around the bar scene in Dallas and I loved them then. They have a rollicking style and powerful presence. But what has really set them apart is the songwriting of bandleader Rhett Miller. He can turn a phrase with the best of them making a good song enter the ranks of the great. And the final song is a duet with Exene Cervenka - how fucking cool is that?

[kleph]

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The Jazz Butcher - Waiting for the Love Bus

The most epherial of the Jazz Butcher records and one of the most moving as well. Pat Fish created a glorious sound that wraps around your head and mesmerises you. But don't think the sharp rhetoric and cutting wit have been left behind, he has a serious problem with hipocrites and an attentive listen to the lyrics will give you a good idea who he feels fits in this category. But the biting sarcasm is muted here and, perhaps, more effective as well. But where else can you find an album with songs about salt lake racing, unemployed Russian army personel and penguins? It's an abomination to God that this record remains out of print.

[kleph]

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The Violent Femmes - The Violent Femmes

Suurrreee. I believe you. You bought this record when it came out. BULLSHIT! You were listening to Def Leppard and Howard Jones trying to be cool during those junior high school dances and had no idea who these three freaks from Milwaukee were playing all these strange songs on acoustic instruments. What the hell? Songs about whacking off and suicide and not getting laid? That's some kind of geek shit. Well baby, I got news for you. I was the geek. I find it horribly ironic that these guys were so hopelessly uncool back then but when college radio started playing them (that would include me) then all the frat freaks emraced them wholeheartedly. Despite this record being overplayed to the point of torture, it still holds up strong. I like Hallowed Ground and The Blind Leading the Naked but neither is as consistently excellent as this one.

[kleph]

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Television - Marquee Moon

I've already gotten grief for not having a Talking Heads record on this list (and one ain't comin) but that's because the late 70s New York scene produced so many other bands that were miles beyond Byrne and company yet not as self serving when it came to promoting themselves. Number one on the list of great NYC bands you never heard of is Television. Richard Lloyd and Tom Verlane stopped doing heroin long enough to get together and create a guitar masterpiece with this record. Every song is an astounding revelation. These guys created this way of playing guitar and it's still being ripped of today (most blatantly of late by The Strokes). This isn't the three-chords and a blaze of glory New York punk or the asinine artist-as-a-young-man excess. This is a group of talented musicians writing great songs that let them play their instruments.

[kleph]

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Love and Rockets - Express

After the brooding glory of Bauhaus and the dance sensibility of Tones on Tail who thought Love and Rockets would rock so fucking hard? This sucker comes out the turnstile at 100 miles per hour and then shifts up into the high gears. Crunchy guitar and pounding bass somehow meld with the metaphysical lyrics to create a tapestry of glorious sound you just have to listen to again and again. They are cool enough to cover Pink Floyd and the Temptations as well as offer up several acoustic efforts demonstrate the stripped down glory of the effort as well. This album simply kicks ass. It beats the warm shit out of 99 percent of those pseudo-grunge bands trying desperately to sound tough that saturate the airwaves today AND they actually have something important to say while doing it.

[kleph]

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The Soft Boys - Underwater Moonlight

When the punk revolution came to England in the late 70s it somehow settled in the academic environs of Cambridge. It was here Robyn Hitchcock and Kimberly Rew decided to see how far folks were willing to handle. Constantly compared to Captain Beefheart, Pink Floyd and the Byrds, the Soft Boys seemed little interested in where they came from as to where they were going. And it was a whole new direction. This band broke down every barrier rock had thrown up in the previous decade they could find - psychedelic guitars, stream of consciousness lyrics, off beat arrangements - nothing was sacred. It's one of the most important records you never heard of but very much worth the effort of finding out about. It turned out these guys could also rock your socks off when they wanted to as well.

[kleph]

well, this is the midway mark of the list. I know my updates have been unpredictable but i plan to have the rest done in about the same time this has taken - about two months.

i'd like to reiterate that this is by no means any attempt to come up with a tally of the greatest records of all time or some such happy crap. this is just my favorite 100 albums. there are a lot of albums i really enjoy and recognise them for their greatness (Springsteen's - Born to Run, Dylan's - Highway 61 Revisited, Wang Chung - Points on the Curve) but haven't become the vital part of my life these have.

i considered to come up with a converse of this list, a compendium of the albums i could entirely do without. but, the good folks at fark recently linked to a list that is pretty damn close and saved me the trouble.

i'll be back next week - or whenever shaneus gets off his ass and set up the purty pictures - and get down with the second half of this grand undertaking.

[kleph]

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Camper Van Beethoven - Telephone Free Landslide Victory

First time I saw these guys the lead singer started the show by stepping to the mike and simply stating "We're Camper Van Beethoven. We're from California. We're on acid." They then spent the next two and a half hours proving it. The skewed lyrics and bizarre instrumentals of this record were somehow fused together with the off-beat sense of humor that permeates every song. Somehow this unholy union of ska, polka, punk, folk and strangeness became a compelling tour de force for a band no one knew how to describe. And it has my favorite song lyric ever - "I had a dream last night/but I forget what it was."

[kleph]

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The dB's - Ride the Wild Tom Tom

The dB's are the biggest dilemma of 80's alternative music: why did R.E.M make it and these guys didn't? They had a stronger pop sensibility and a love for stripped down guitar-laden songs. They boasted two excellent songwriters with Chris Stamey and Peter Hollsapple. But they never seemed to get the breaks. No less than five record labels cratered under them and only one of their records made any sales. So, it was a bit of a shock in the early 1990s when this little gem showed up five years after their last show. This is a collection of their early songs that never made it into the light of day. Amid the turgid gloom of the New York scene these songs are like a breath of fresh air. It's a sad testament that a band this good had to go as unnoticed as they did.

[kleph]

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Stewart Copeland - Rumblefish (Orignal Motion Picture Soundtrack)

As the Police entered their superstar phase and Sting began that long road through obnoxious to insufferablity a lot of people kind of overlooked Stewart Copeland. They really shouldn't have, his work with other bands and his pseudo-solo efforts like Klark Kent were consistantly good. Everyone respected him as a world-class drummer but nobody was really ready for Rumblefish. Copelands frantic percussion created an anxiety-laden soundtrack for Francis Ford Coppola's take on the S.E. Hinton's novel. It was no less than a dynamic new direction and a singular musical voice. It is a work that stands entirely independent of the film and sharply seperate from Copeland's work with Summers and Sumner. And if that all wasn't cool enough, Wall of Voodoo frontman Stan Ridgeway did the vocals on the one non-instrumental.

[kleph]

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The Replacements - Hootenanny

The Replacements were legends for being drunk and disorderly and, at the same time, they were also renowned as a great band who could make your hair stand on end in amazement when they wanted to. This album staggers confusedly between the two poles and is all the more great because of it. You really get the compelling sense of energy the band put into their work and the rough edges only make it sound sweeter. According to legend the band loathed the producer and, just to piss him off they all switched instruments to sloppily barrel through the title track. When they finished he asked them if they wanted to hear it again or just give it another try and Westerberg responded, "Nope. Track one. Side one." It's as fun an album a band can ever hope to record and it also has Westerberg's impeccably gorgeous "Within Your Reach" on it as well.

[kleph]

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Hoodoo Gurus - Stoneage Romeos

A dose of straight out rock and roll the world needed back in 1984. I first heard this on a road trip through Arkansas one summer and have made it part of my world ever since. These guys rocked hard and worshiped at the church of jangly guitars but they didn't have the irritating swagger or big hair or hyper-hystronic solos that set all the dog in the neighborhood on edge. What they did have was flat out great songs they delivered straight up without all the irritating frills. As Tyrany pointed out to me last year, there ain't a happy song on this record but that's not to say it's depressing. I find it almost impossible to listen to this album and not set it up and listen to the whole thing again. For the record, I always thought "Tojo" was about a guy whose girlfriend left on Christmas, Tyrany was kind enough to set me straight.

[kleph]

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Unrest - Perfect Teeth

First let me get the weird part done with - this record was produced by Duran Duran's Simon LeBon. Now. You've heard it so forget it because it has nothing to do with how great this album is or what this Washington D.C. trio sounds like. Critics swooned over their earlier, more experimental efforts but I found Perfect Teeth to be the most consistent and effective effort by this band. This record is the unforseen fusion of British gloom-rock and D.C. straight edge hardcore as delivered by a songwriter with an amazingly strong pop sensibility. The songs swirl around the enuii and vauge depression that make up our modern life but the sheer exuberance of the guitars give you a sense of hope despite it all. Like most, I got hooked by the infectuous "Make Out Club" but became an adherent after listening all the way through. It's a perfect summertime afternoon album, when you are at the cusp of the day and nowhere to go.

[kleph]

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R.E.M. - Murmur

Who would have thought the revolution would begin in Athens, GA? But it did. Four guys formed a band and decided to rewrite all the rules when they did it. Sythesizers the big thing? Screw it, we only need the guitars. Intelligible lyrics? Nobody listens to them anyway. Slick packaging? How about a picture of a field of kudzu? Stipe's low key to the point of unintelligible singing created a compelling counterpoint to Buck's frentic guitar. Barry and Mills' rythm section hold it all together but in a way you would least expect.They did everything the wrong way and it was absolutely perfect. They heralded back to a more pure form of rock where the song was the thing that mattered and they weren't afraid to wear their allegences on their sleeves - musical, political and cultural. But this isn't art-rock it's much more authentic.

[kleph]

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Superchunk - Incidental Music 1991-1995

This is the best of the best of Superchunk but it's sold as a grab bag of B-sides and rarities. Somehow this eclectic collection gives one of the clearest pictures of how damn talented this band really is. The steady march of "Foolish," the hopping energy of "On the Mouth," the subtle glory of "Throwing Things" and the staggering brilliance of "Cadmium." There just ain't a bad song on the record (and the hidden alternative version of "Precision Auto" is fucking awsome too) The ultimate testament to this band's greatness is the powerful cover of The Magnetic Field's "100,000 Fireflies." The original is a pristine song of longing but the chunk makes it a powerful howl of agony and frustration. I cannot play this in my car and not scream the lyrics at the top of my lungs. The only reason this album falls to this rank it because as a collection, the song lineup can be jarring. But you get used to it. Buy this record. Listen to it daily. Make it religion.

[kleph]

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The Pixies - Surfer Rosa

Ever hear to an album the first time and just go "Wow" the entire time you were listening? This Boston foursome simply defied every convention in the book and sounded absolutely kick ass doing it. There is a raw joy to this record that most of the band's later work couldn't capture. What did it all mean? Hard to say. "Cactus" is a doctoral dissertation on sheer fucking cool. "Gigantic" is Kim Deal doing that thing she does better than anyone else. "Vamos" was straightforward adrenaline in song format. "Tony's Theme"... well, we aren't sure what that one's about but, heck, we like it anyway. All this and a spectacular rack on the front cover. What more can one man ask of an album?

[kleph]

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The Rolling Stones - Let it Bleed

Every few years I fall completely in love with this album all over again. It's one of the first records that ever made my must-listen-all-the-way-through-every-time standard. Rather than the preening rock-god showcases the band later came to be known for (which are pretty fucking great in their own way) this record is the band being true to the music that created them - blues, country, and old-style rock and roll. this is some of the best work richards ever did and with Mick Taylor, Brian Jones and Ry Cooder also handling axe duties it's possibly one of the best guitar albums ever made.

[kleph]

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Whiskeytown - Faithless Street

Much to my shame, I stumbled across this band after they broke up. The plus side was that I got to discover three astounding albums of just incredible music. Yes, it is country but not that soulless Nashville crap you hear now. Almost the entire record is spectacular and some songs, like "Factory Girl" - one of the most beautifully mournfull songs ever written - are simply timeless. This is a straight shot of Hank Williams Sr. not that HWJr. shit that now walks the earth. this band doesn't just play these songs they try and rip open the emotional core of the music. This is what country originally set out to do. Or as Adams puts it in one of the lyrics: "I started this country band 'cause punk rock was too hard to sing."

[kleph]

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Leftfield - Leftism

I drove from Dallas to Phoenix one summer (19 hours baby... nineteen fucking hours) with nothing but this CD and a few other's. When you get in the wide open of West Texas you put the radio on scan and watch it just flip through the frequencies over and over and over and.... but once I put this baby on I was hooked. It's one of the best desert driving CD's I've ever heard - intense, hypnotic, seductive and just damn well made I just let it play over and over the whole way. Special touches like John Lydon, samples from Star Wars and Toni Halliday just make it that much more essential. My only beef is I just wish the songs from Trainspotting and Shallow Grave were on this disk as well.

[kleph]

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XTC - Skylarking

An absolute revlelation of an album. Andy Partridge and the band create nothing less than a concept album for the new age on the subject of life itself... well, a life... or a lifetime... If you listen to the album you'll get it. It's a staggering conceptual undertaking but holds together due to the pragmatism of the songwriting. Which isn't to say the songs are simple. Producer Todd Rungren helped the band pull togeher a psychelic swirl of pop composition that stay strongly focused instead of sliding into Beatlesque parody like the band's overrated follow up Oranges and Lemons did. Skylarking is known for the wonderful anti-religion rant "Dear God," but the fact is this album simply does not have a bad song on it. And the best songs, like "Season Cycle," "Earn Enough for Life" and "Summer's Cauldron" stick with you for the rest of your life.

[kleph]

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The Rave Up's - Town and Country

Most famous as the band in the bar in the movie Pretty in Pink the Rave Ups have estabished a post-1980s chic with the song they performed "Positively Lost Me." It's a great tune but the album was even better. This California foursome was part of the pseudo-country set that emerged in mid decade but they had little use for the hayseed and fell right in the realm of honest-to-god rock and roll. The songs are all well written, well played and catchier than they have any right to be. They actually penned several songs after this that were even better ("These Wishes," "A Girl For Me," but they never produced a record this solid. And, to book mark their place in pop culture history, the band's last appearance as the band that played at Brenda and Brandon's junior prom on Beverly Hills 90120. *sigh*

[kleph]

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The dB's - The Sound of Music

With the los of singer/songwriter Chris Stamey the alternative crowd thought the brilliant run of the dB's was over. When the next record, penned by the other singer/songwriter in the band, Peter Hollsapple, came out and was great folks thought it was a fluke. But when R.E.M. actually got the band a big label contract and they produced The Sound of Music it was perfection itself. Hollsapple's songwriting is at it's prodigious peak here and everybody who'se anybody in mid-80's alternative music shows up to lend a hand. These are tales of love gone wrong, working crappy jobs, and the usual ennui but there is an undeniable sense of hope and optimism to the proceedings and not a little romanticism. My girlfriend at the time said if she could sing "I Lie" on stage with Peter Hollsapple once in her life she could die happy. She was definately a keeper.

[kleph]

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The Feelies - The Good Earth

The second-best band ever to come out of Hoboken, N.J. and, surprisingly, that's saying something. The influence of The Velvet Underground is palpable in every note these guy's play but unlike the legion of copycats to that great group, The Feelies use it as a starting point to something all their own. Sadly, this is another of my all-time faves that is out of print but if ever you find it the rewards are great. There is an organic lushness to the work instead of the raw urban angst of the Velvets. Every song builds on the foundation of a simple few chords and, by the end, is rolling forward with an estatic energy of it's own creation. There is a sense of longing here but also a strong sense of hope as well.

[kleph]

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Spiritualized - Lazer Guided Melodies

The day my friend Katie turned 30, she locked herself in her house and listened to this CD for ten hours straight. When she told me I could only kick myself for not doing the same. This is the acme of Jay Spaceman's journey into the enveloping glory of sound. It moves from the stark glory of a single guitar to the swirling beauty of symphonic constructions. On some of the other Spiritualized albums the compositions can be overly produced and, to be honest, masturbatory in their excess. But there is a clear sense of vision here that makes every song a revelation of itself and a perfect accompanyment for the rest of the work. For someone facing the next phase of their life the music is perfectly overwhelming and ineffably hopeful.

[kleph]

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The Magnetic Fields - The Wayward Bus/Distant Plastic Trees

I have rarely heard an album that simultaniously broke my heart and made me believe in the permanence of love the way that Distant Plastic Trees does. Both of these albums are excellent (you have to buy them together) but Trees is. quite simply, a songwriting tour-de-force. The arrangements are simple, quaint even but that lets the sheer power of the words just assail you with their poetry. Lyrics like "You gave me all your mirrors and they made me deformed," and "Maybe tomorrow I'll see love in your eyes and mine will dry," just slay me anew every time I listen to this record. The band went on to create the astounding 69 Songs that is truly impressive as well but not nearly as tautly consistent as this work. And, as noted earlier on this list, the song "100,000 Fireflies" is simply a masterpiece. Superchunk's cover makes you wither with it's fury, the original here simply shatters you with its sad beauty.

[kleph]

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The Modern Lovers - The Modern Lovers

While anarchy reigned on both sides of the Atlantic during the late 1970s, a bunch of geeks in Boston started making a dfiierent kind of music that would change the world in it's own way. Jonathan Richman and his buddies looked back to the clear musical sounds of a generation before and created a type of music a generation ahead. From Richman's disarming nasal vocals, to the straight ahead guitar work to the whirl of future Talking Head, Jerry Harrison's keyboards there is just an amazing sincerity to each and every song and, Goddammit, this is just a fun album to listen to. "Roadrunner" and "Pablo Picasso" are now alternative rock foundational classics and I've always loved "She Cracked," espcially after hearing Richman's story about perfoming it in the classic "Monologue about Bermuda" on his Having a Party with Jonathan Richman album.

[kleph]

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New Order - Low Life

For me, New Order was always a matter of the parts being stronger than the whole. Every album had one or two songs that just fucking nailed it but you had to wade through the crap to get there. Except for Low Life. Sure, "Bizarre Love Triangle" and "Temptation" surpass any single song on this CD, but no other album from this Manchester group ever was ever as a complete artistic vision. From the startling sharp drumbeats that hurl you into "Love Vigilantes" (one of their best and most underrated songs, by the way) to the whirl of sound that finishes "Face Up" there just is not a bad song to be found on this album. Most importantly they found a way to balance the dour trappings of their Joy Division past with the electronic pop that dominated their future. That applies to the music but particularly in the lyrics - of all their albums I feel this is the one where the band actually had something to say. This album is no less than everything you love about this band and none of the nonsense.

[kleph]

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The English Beat - I Just Can't Stop It

It is almost beyond belief that an album can start off with this much energy and zip then keep it going through 12 tracks. The lush sound of the six-man band is propelled forward with an infectious groove that keeps on going. This is an album so cool that Sting wore a t-shirt of it in a Police video - back when Sting was way cool. Ranking Roger's bubbling vocals, the odd saxaphone bleat, ripping rythm guitar, trilling bass lines. It's a symphony of ska. And it's got something to say as well. I really liked the fact that John Cusack put "Mirror in the Bathroom" in his movie Grosse Pointe Blank for the fight scene. It really gets to the dark subject of the song. The single bad thing about this album is that it's too damn short. Something this good you want more of and fast.

[kleph]

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R.E.M. - Life's Rich Pageant

This is the soundtrack of my college years. While all of R.E.M.'s early records were stellar musical accomplishments this is the album where they came into their own. While their work before gets your attention and the work after is professionally produced, this is the album you just listen to. It ranges from the delicately gorgeous "Flowers of Guatemala," to the frantic testemony of "I Believe," to the rock solid cover of The Clique's "Superman." Every single song impeccable but, even more amazingly, they all are vastly different in how they succeed. Buck's guitar work is the most understated and masterful, Stipe's lyrics are poigniant and free of the overbearing nonsense that came later. Mills and Berry... well they are the same here as every R.E.M. outing, perfect.

[kleph]

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Lisa Germano - Happiness

The album so good they had to release it twice. Although a well-known studio and touring musician work (she currently is part of Neil Finn's band) this album came as a revelation. It's understated and thoroughly melancholy but powerful in a sublte way that sticks with you. Her whispered vocals simply slay me every time I listen to this album. The songs are a study on how we doom our relationships in our desperate attempts to make them work. Germano knows that holding onto someone for ulterior reasons is doomed to fail but she is self-perceptive to know we do it anyway. I prefer this version of the album because it has an organic feel that gives it a feeling of hope as well as a great cover of Nancy Sinatra's "These Boots Were Made for Walking." Soon after she recorded this album Germano became the victim of a stalker and the reworked 4AD version of the record is much much darker as a result.

[kleph]

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The Cure - Head on the Door

For a lot of people who just don't get The Cure, this is the album you give them to let them understand. It's dereft of the gothic nonsense and early 80s kitsch that haunts much of the rest of this band's output and is nothing less than 100 percent kick ass songwriting and musicianship. Smith and Co. seem to be more experimenting with the music on this album rather than experimenting with their instruments. The song list just don't got a bad effort. I spent many a teenage night on the floor of my room listening to "The Blood,"meanwhile "Push" shows how you can put a shitload of power in a song that isn't necessarily that fast, while "Close to Me" is the archtypical 80s song turned on it's head and all the better for it. Lotsa folks insist Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me is the superior work but there is just too much damn filler on that one to make it to the top of this amazing band's pantheon. And, I'm sorry, "Just Like Heaven" is a great great song but "Night Like This" kicks it's ass.

[kleph]

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Primal Scream - Screamadelica

This is one that I wasn't real fond of at first but damn if it didn't grow on me. On first listen it seemed a bit excessive but on repeated playing I just couldn't say no to the groove this baby's got. If they made the movie Blow Up in 1990, this would have been the soundtrack (which kinda explains why they got the job for Trainspotting) This is an unholy mix of whole musical genres that just flat out works. Hippy love acoustics, trippy freak expermentalism, a dose of raver euphoria and a good bit of dance sensibility - it's all here in one well crafted package. It took the underground hedonistic excess and crafted into a straightforward musical vision. It swerves on the turns and threatens to slide off into the chasm of anarchy but the groove pulls it back on track like it ain't nothin' but a thing. Hands down this is one of the best morning after/hangover albums ever released.

Happy now, Shaneus?

[kleph]

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The Jam - Sound Affects

That The Jam has ebbed into a quiet obscurity is an abomination that must be addressed. You can't hear their music and not be affected - it is a raw unique vision and this is the prime case. This album marked the transformation from angry young mods to a genuine musical force to be reckoned with. They kept the anger and urgency of the punk bands that came before them and fused them with the cool mod sensibility of the generation before that. The throbbing bass line grab you by the throat and pull you in and the effortless groove keeps you going with it. This is pop music but with an edge that's razor sharp and specifically designed to cut you. Every damn song on this record is a pop music masterpiece of the kind that you find youself unable to get out of your head for days - and you really don't mind.

[kleph]

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Crowded House - Temple of Low Men

The most strangely wonderful album to come out of the 80s. It's like a beautiful dark pool in the moonlight - shimmering in it's beauty but haunting in the unseen depths below. Finn reached his full maturity as a songwriter with this record and the band played every one of his compositions to perfection. The production is spot on and every single track is impeccable. There is the raw fury of "Kill Eye," the mournful regret of "Better Be Home Soon," and the hopeful realism of "Love this Life." This isn't an album about how great things could be, this is an album about the beauty you find in the harshness of the real world. This is a masterpiece of a true songwriter who has found what he has to say. You don't listen to this album, you let this album become part of your life.

[kleph]

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David Garza - Eyes Wide Open

If ever a city was saturated with music Austin, Texas is it. It's the lifeblood of the town. College kids on porches play polinases on junkyard pianos, homeless men play perfect jazz on broken Sears guitars and every club you go into has a house band that will blow you away. David Garza played for years on the circuit there and was renouned for his laid back musicianship in a city of laid back musicians. This is a compendium of beautiful guitar melodies, insightful lyrics (The line "She eats caviar/He eats Top Ramen" just slays me every time I hear it), gorgeous singing (we lusted after the backup singer - because of her voice) and just a real sense of fascination and hope. This is the record I pull out every spring to reaffirm my hope for the world.

[kleph]

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Lone Justice - Lone Justice

Good Lord, this girl can sing. From the first song on the record Maria McKee lets you know she has something to say and Goddamnit you are gonna sit down and listent. It is almost unbelievable she was only 19 when this came out. Lone Justice emerged from nowhere and gave us one of the best alt-country/rock-and-roll albums to come down the pike in a long time. And work of this ilk has rarely been seen since. Not only is the singing enough to make you a believer, the overal musicianship is perfect. The album veers from the rockin "Ways to be Wicked," to the folksy "Don't Toss Us Away," to the effervescent "You are the Light." This record had a strong sense of history and little use for sentimentality. It also carried that hallmark of quality you would find every so often on mid-1980s albums - "Benmont Tench appears courtesy his mom and dad."

[kleph]

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The Del Fuegos - The Longest Day

In the era of big hair guitar histronics this Boston foursome gave us a straight ahead rock and roll album that didn't have time for the nonsense. This is easily one of the best guitar albums ever produced and there is only one way to play this baby - LOUD. The vocals are raw and cut right to the point and the guitars just don't back down. This record is seeped with old-school rock and roll and blues but with a sharp modern edge. It's as sad as a lonesome train whistle then powerful as a diesel locomotive the next. The band had a number of good songs after this but never came up with a record that was as complete and straight to the bone powerful as this one.

[kleph]

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Let's Active - Big Plans for Everybody

Out of the hills and tobacco farms of North Carolina came a small legion of great bands with a spot-on pop sensibility. Foremost among them would be Mitch Easter whose Drive In Studio he built in his mom's garage became the laboratory for a whole musical revolution (R.E.M.'s, Chronic Town was recorded there). But Easter couldn't be behind the boards all the time, and his band Let's Active bubbled over with sharp songwriting and restrained studio experimentation. You have to go long and far to find a better song than "Fell," or "In Little Ways." And it isn't a bell chamber experiment either, witness the delirious slide guitar of "Route 67." Over the years every song on this record has been my "favorite" but it's the first verse of "Reflecting Pool" that still just slays me every time.

[kleph]

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The Golden Palominos - Blast of Silence

This band was once described as drummer Anton Fier and anyone else who happened to be in the room. The thing is, there usually were some excellent musicians in that room. The bands first offering Visions of Excess was an excellent record but got attention mainly because the blokes from R.E.M. and Johnny Lydon were on it. The follow up didn't have them but was unbelievably superior. This record is an eclectic collection of rock solid music. Matthew Sweet's effort on "Something Becomes Nothing" provides the best song you have never heard of. Bill Laswell's heavy blues offering "Something Else is Working Harder" explains exactly why everying in the world keeps going to shit. And the incomparable Syd Straw (one of the most sorely underappreciated vocalists of this era) takes the reigns on a number of the songs. She not only NAILS Peter Hollsapple's song "Diamond" but her take on Little Feat's "I've Been The One" is the most perfect breakup song ever performed - turn the lights out and hold your still beating heart freshly ripped from your chest in your hands. All this an T-Bone Burnett too.

[kleph]

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Yo La Tengo - Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out

For years Yo La Tengo - possibly the best band ever to come out of New Jersey - has been meandering along it's offbeat musical paths slowly building a staunch following of folks who like something different but insist on it being good. They often garnered the inevitable Velvet Underground comparisons but with Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out they made a quantum leap in their work. This album has been described as a musical conversation between two people in love but it's not about fairytale romance. "Our Way to Fall" nails down the agony of young love when you are feeling the most important thing in the world and have no idea what you are doing, "Last Days of Disco" sets the same scene for someone who knows better about relationships but still can't help being a romantic, and "Tears Are in Your Eyes" is a gorgeously sad lament about doing something stupid to hurt someone you care about. The whole album is's full of little moments, strong emotions, hurtfull mistakes and second chances - all the things that make up real relationships. Most of the compostions tend to be understated with soft harmonies, strummed guitars and a mournful keyboard that give it a haunted quality but never fully gives into dispair.

[kleph]

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Love Tractor - This Ain't No Outerspaceship

Athens, Georgia produced a slew of great bands in the 1980s that saturated the college radio airwaves but never made the bigtime (except for R.E.M., of course) One of my favorites of the forgottens is Love Tractor. This band's first several albums were mostly instrumental works - intricately layered guitar melodies allied with a killer sense for how to write a hook. For Outerspaceship they finally stepped up to the microphone, slimmed down a few compositions to a regular pop-song format and produced a masterpiece. There is just a great feel to the whole record that is hard to put into words. The songs are all dead-on from the jangly-guitar euphoria of "Beatle Boots" (one of my all-time favorite songs) to the inspired cover of The GAP band's "Party Train" There are still plenty of excellent instrumentals such as "Rudolf Nureyev" and the glorious heartbreak of "We All Loved Each Other So Much." I can't put this CD on and not think back to those days at the University of Alabama with the ashtrays full of Camel Filters, the endless cans of cheap beer and some of the best times of my young life.

[kleph]

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The Stone Roses - The Stone Roses

This is easily one of the most important albums of the 90s even though it was released just before that decade began. As the Manchester scene began burbling to life at the nadir of the 80s, the Stone Roses defined a generation with a record nobody saw coming. The sheer charisma of this band was incredible, the singing was drenched in emotion and the guitar work is just breathtaking. For one of the first funtime-party-rave albums it also is interestingly cerebrial. There are questions of love, life and faith that course through every aspect of this album. Not only is every song exquisite on it's own, the overall album is put together with care as well. The Beatlesque breakdown of "I am the Ressurection" is not only the perfect crescendo for the song but the precise intro needed for the cool funk of "Fools Gold." The sheer energy of this album makes it an adventure every time you listen to it.

[kleph]

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Camper Van Beethoven - Camper Van Beethoven

A surreal psychedelic trip that meanders its strange way across a landscape of folk rock, punk, country and god knows what else. It's the aural equivilant of a Dali painting if the Spaniard had an affinity for jangly guitars. Until this point, Camper had been pretty much considered a novelty act but there was a strange acid-fried vision here that made people reassess the band. The album ranges from simply whimsical "Good Guys and Bad Guys," to is the surreal monotone road trip of "Peace and Love," through the bizzare cover of a bizzare Pink Floyd song "Interstellar Overdrive," to the straight up rocker "Shut Us Down." A good example of what this album is like is the incomprehensible but intriguing "Five Sticks" that actually is nothing but the "Ambiguity Song," from their first album in it's entirety backwards. This is a kind of experiment that could fall off the edge into parody but the sheer musicanship and honesty to this strange vision make the record transcend it's eccentricies and become something simply sublime.

[kleph]

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The Replacements - Let It Be

The Mat's burned through the indie 80s with a drunken fury but this was the album they came into their own. There was flashes of brilliance amid the chaotic splendour of their earlier albums but this time they were able to control the energy and create a classic album. Sure they are having fun but that didn't stop them from writing mature, thoughtful songs like the addictively catchy "I Will Dare" Relationships? We got relationships - "Unsatisfied" is the most heart-wrenchingly true song ever composed about being with someone, "Androgynous" deals with kids a lot more like you than you would expect and the raw frustration of "Answering Machine" is almost physically painful. But that ain't all the boys were up to, they were intent on enjoying themselves as well. "Black Diamond" is a Kiss cover made all the more hysterical because it's done with a straight face, "Seen Your Video" sums up the horror MTV became even before The Real World and "Gary's Got a Boner" kind of speaks for itself. After this they jumped to the big labels, got more polished and never again captured that raw glory of their youth.

[kleph]

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Dire Straits - Making Movies

There is a sublime quality to this whole album that has kept me entranced for more than 20 years. Every song is a glorious meditation on songwriting and the heavenly sound of a master guitar player at the peak of his powers. Side One breaks your heart and Side Two gives you the strength to get back up again. "Tunnel of Love" and "Romeo and Juliet" are not just love songs, they are musical journeys through love affairs that each side knows will probabl end up badly. "Solid Rock" is a solid rock song played with assurance by a man who has played a lot of rock songs. I have a hard time describing "Skateaway" because I've loved hearing this song for so many years now. There is a strange wistfulness and yearning in every song and Knopfler plays his Stratocaster like no one else who has ever picked up the instrument. Many herald Brothers in Arms as Knopfler's masterpiece but this record is infintely more self assured and emotionally rich - it also has the added benefit of not being played into the fucking ground.

[kleph]

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The The - Mind Bomb

Every bit as important today as when it came out in 1988. Matt Johnson discarded the pseudo-pop trappings of his earlier work and created a singular artistic vision. Bringing ex-Smith's axeman, Johnny Marr, brought the level of the musicianship up to the level of the songwriting. The first half of the record is a concentrated study on religion and the subsequent ills it tends to cause. Can anyone listen to "Armageddon Days" today and not worry about the future? Are the questions asked in "Kingdom of Truth"answered any better today? Then side two changes gears and becomes introspective. It's about sensuality, sexuality and how one can give oneself in a relationship when they don't even know who they are. Johnson lays bare the faults and failures of his relationships in songs like "August and September" but he affirms his belief in love in "Gravitate to Me." It's best to follow the man's advice with this one - "Please play very loud, very late, very alone, and with the lights turned very low."

[kleph]

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The Clash - London Calling

The only album that matters from the only band that matters. This is the heart of punk and it beats as loudly today as when it burst out of England in the late 1970s. I remember hearing "Train in Vain" on WLS in Chicago when I was a wee lad living in Indiana. It was then I knew the horrible 70s were ending and my time... my music was soon to arrive. It's was two slabs of glorious vinyl without a single shred of filler. The album bursts out the gate with anthem-like title track and get down to the nitty with the rockabilly "Brand New Cadillac." From there the band takes you on one of the most eclectic tours of musical styles with the reggae-esque "Revolution Rock," the pop cool of "Lost in the Supermarket," the punk purism of "Clampdown." Their energy, their sense of purpose and their sheer musicianship keep things moving without getting bogged down. Unlike a lot of punk bands full up on angst and anger and not really sure about what, The Clash had a political consience and axes to grind. This was a band with something to say and say it they did.

[kleph]

before we begin the Top Ten of this now legendary list i'd like to take a moment to recognise my Honorable Mentions. when i set out this list i decided to keep it pretty much the "rock" music i dearly love since it makes up the lion's share of what i listen to.

but, after a few weeks, it began to bother me that some of the records i listen to most often would be left off the list because they don't quite fit that mold. so i decided to make a "special" catagory for these albums.

these are the albums that i find myself playing for days on end when the right mood hits me. when the stars are in alignment the cd player beckons and i'm simply left without a choice. there are just ten of 'em but bear with me as i get this out of my system...

[kleph]

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Pat Metheny & Lyle Mays - As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls

A strange little jazz album I fell in love with after seeing the sorely underapreciated movie Fandango. The song "It's For You" is played at the wedding at the end of the movie and it fit the scene so well I had to go out and dig this record up. Guitarist Metheny makes a shimmering tapestry of sound that keyboardist Mays darts about at whim. Nothing is rushed and everything is in it's proper place. It's the soundtrack of a rainy day on the cusp of springtime. It's a subtle and sublime work that insists you listen to it again after the final track subsides.

[kleph]

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Elgar - The Enigma Variations

Typically I listen to classical music on the radio and let the DJ select the works for me. While my understanding of the history of the music is pretty good, my knowledge of individual performers and composers tends to be scholarly rather than intimately involved with the music itself. I stumbled across Elgar at my favorite "arty" theatre in Dallas that would play part of The Enigma Variations before every movie. It was a very positive memory and when I heard it on the local radio station I desperately tracked it down. It also is enjoyable because every so often in the work you recognise the Warner Brother's cartoon that was set to the music. It's also the performance music from the movie Hillary and Jackie that stars the incomparable Rachel Griffiths. This has since become my Sunday morning music to read the paper by. A soundtrack for my me time.

[kleph]

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Dave Brubeck Quartet - Time Out

Possibly my absolute favorite album to cook to. Brubeck and saxaphonist Paul Desmond crafted a timeless dissertation on the meaning of cool with Time Out that is best exemplified in the song "Take Five." It's an interesting work because of the extremely unusual time signatures used by the group for the compositions but, rather than create a sense of dissonance or confusion, they make the music move in an urgency all its own. This may be the most overplayed Jazz record in creation but thats partly because it's one of the best.

[kleph]

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William Orbit - Strange Cargo

In the mid-1980s IRS records came out with a group of instrumental records under the title "No Speak." I picked up Stewart Copeland's cause I thought his solo stuff was great but I also snagged this little gem. Orbit had been the house wizard at IRS for awhile but this album revealed him for the individualist he really is. The songs range from Spanish Guitar compostitions to moody electronica to pseudo-techno noodlings. Oddly, there seems to be a unified theme at work here and nothing sounds really out of place. When I was in college and I'd come home and my roomate and his buddies were stoned out of their gourd watching the light from the lava lamp on the ceiling - this was invariably the record they had on.

[kleph]

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Miles Davis - Kind of Blue

Davis,

Bill Evans,

John Coltrane,

Cannonball Adderley,

Paul Chambers,

Jimmy Cobb,

and Wynton Kelly

Anything more need not be said.

[kleph]

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Nomad - Nomad

I understand this is not "authentic" Australian aboriginal music but I've listened to it faithfully for years now. I suspect it's heavily based in such music but purists take umbrage with the compositions. Irregardless, I love this album and I found it a great introduction to Aboriginal music for when I went down there. Adam Plack, who operates under the nom-du-plum "Nomad," has crafted a wonderful album that fuses the didgeridoo with modern worldbeat rythms. It's one of the best road trip records I've ever run across. I listen to it every time I drive across the desert to visit my family in Phoenix.

[kleph]

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Thelonious Monk - Straight, No Chaser

Simply the definition of cool. Monk performs every song with a composed improvosational skill no one ever could even come close to. Listen closely and you can hear him murmur along with the music and softly tap his foot as he created this tapestry of music. While more popular jazz recording travel musical paths the listener can see, Monk and his crew travel through unexpected notes and melodies that leave the listener blissfully lost in the sound but safely delivered home every time. It's the rare album that give a sense of accomplishment to the listener having heard the whole work. It's a work only described by superlatives and they all eventually fall short.

[kleph]

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The Anthology of American Folk Music

Compiled by musicologist Harry Smith and released in the early 1950s, this collection changed modern music forever. It was embraced by the nascent folk/hippie movement and was the most influential work on artists such as Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and countless others. Woodstock and all it begat would not have happened if this record had not been made. More importantly it is a testament for the broad musical powers of the artists who played across this country from the turn of the century on. The Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack simply pales in comparison to this monumental work. The recent re-issue by the Smithsonian Institution goes even further in documenting and compiling this priceless collection of music. It is six CDs of music covering a broad range of styles that emerged out of the cultural gumbo of America after the turn of the century - blues, folk, gospel, zydeco, ballads, you name it. It's full of card sharks, farms threatened by floods, marriage proposals, lost loves, gristly murders and an overall joy de verve that makes every listening a new adventure.

[kleph]

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Three Colors Soundtrack

The Three Colors trilogy is the masterpiece of the late filmmaker Krzysztof Kieslowski. The three films Blue, White and Red each thematically correspond to the colors of the French flag and the ideals each represents. The films are staggeringly beautiful and intensely profound with levels of symbolism and meaning. One important theme throughout the trilogy is the music composed by Zbigniew Preisner who worked closely with Kieslowski to create the soundtrack. The themes of the film are inseperable from the music. In fact the team created a fictional composer who is referenced in each film - a musical touchstone for the characters. The music is hauntingly beautiful and subtly moving. In Red the score is a stirring adaptation of Ravel's Bolero, in White it is a take on Polish folk songs but the acme of the work is the incomparable Blue (pictured). The film centers around the widow of a composer who may or may not have created much of her husband's works. As the woman - the shatteringly beautiful Julie Delpy - tries to shut herself off from her former life the theme music continues to reverberate through the film showing how she cannot fully deny the pain she has endured. It's an allegory for Europe which, at the time, was becoming unified after the fall of the iron curtain but it's an intensely personal struggle as well. Somehow, Preisner, managed to convey both aspects in a gorgeous piece of music I never tire of listening to.

[kleph]

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Brian Eno's Ambient works

This series of albums are easily the most-played in my entire collection. I've had to buy multiple copies of each because they get worn by so much use. The incomparable Brian Eno created this series in the late 1970s as a type of "ambient" or background music that had a musical integrity of it's own. But it's most definitely not, as we previously discussed in a ZGeek thread, musical wallpaper. These are dense musical works that challenge the listener that focuses on the subtle nuances that unfold. Most are collaborations between Eno and the minimalist pianist Harold Budd including the revolutionary Ambient 1: Music for Airports. Each is distinct and beautiful with a strange power to skip the locutions of logic and evoke profound emotional responses. My favorite is easily The Pearl which, technically isn't one of the Ambient albums but follows closely with the pattern of the series. Recently I have been listening to Ambient 3: Day of Radiance a glistening waterfall of string compositions by Laraaji. While the other Ambient albums Ambient 2: The Plateaux of Mirror and Ambient 4: On Land are wonderful they follow closely in the footsteps of the first offering. Fourth World, Vol. 1: Possible Musics is a more complex attempt at the same subject and I also love the predecessor to the series, Discreet Music particularly on those long nights of winter when you've got a cognac to keep you warm.

[kleph]

Alrighty, at long last we have arrived at the end. The Top Ten. When I initially made this list I wrote these down immediately and only later changed the position of two items.

The one thing I learned in making this list is that my Top 100 is constantly evolving. If i did this again almost all of these records would still be here but I guarantee they'd be in a different order. The single best part about doing this list has been going back and re-listening to all these albums in order to write the entries.

Yet, the worst part of getting this far is realizing the ommissions and not having any way to include them. I'm kicking myself in the ass for not including such excellent albums like Los Lobos' How Will the Wolf Survive?, The Psychedelic Furs' Talk, Talk, Talk and Prince's epic 1999. (and God only knows what kind of brain fart had me put Superchunk's Here's Where the Strings Come In before Foolish)

But what's done is done. This is the cream of the crop. This is The Top Ten.

[kleph]

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The Jazz Butcher - Condition Blue

This is the sound of a man at the crossroads. The Jazz Butcher had leaped through a decade of brilliant and offbeat records but with the arrival of the 90s he was moving out of that "punk" phase and putting a bit more time on the introspective. Condition Blue was written as the butcher was transitioning to a new set of musical alliances and as his private life was falling apart. What Condition Blue eventually became was a pristine musical vision only the butcher could pull off.

There is a belief here in the power of love but there is a hard-earned cynicsm about how relationships don't always work out the way we want. Songs like "Rachelland" and "Girls Say Yes" are gorgeously romantic but not hopelessly so. There is a weathered realism here as well with lyrics such as "You got to watch for the exit wounds/When girls say "yes"." The butcher isn't interested in casting blame here, he's trying to understand. There is an introspection here but don't write this off as shoegazer, "Shirley MacLaine" is rock and roll, no questions asked.

The songs are marked with the butcher's trademark oddness but there is an underlying sense of trying to understand what is happening in this weird world. The songs are composed of complex layers of guitars that ebb and swell with the emotional turmoil of the lyrics. But this isn't a shoegazer record by any means. As the butcher puts it: "I'm not in a band to make money, or be a "professional entertainer" - I'm in a band because I like to play very loud electric guitar. This IS the sound of me having fun, and getting me to do that in those dark days of mid-1991 was no small job."

[kleph]

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Wilco - Yankee, Hotel, Foxtrot

This album is not just a staggering artistic achievement, it is a dissertation into how - although we live in an age where the transmittal of information is at the highest level since the universe was created - the simple ability to communicate with each other has completely broken down. Which seems like a lot to ask of an album that is so blissfully enjoyable to listen to over and over and over. But it isn't.

I bought this album well over a year ago and I still find myself fascinated by it's musical depths, intellectual challenges and just sheer emotional impact. The songs are meticulously crafted but most emerge out of that strange dischordant electronic whine you find between the stations on a shortwave, tell their story with a simple understateed grace and then dissolve into dissonate chaos.

There just isn't a bad song on this bad boy. From the eerie lonesome meditation of "I am Trying to Break Your Heart" to the nostalgic poppiness of "Heavy Metal Drummer" to the understated power of "Jesus, etc." I still find myself breathless every time I behold the raw emotional power of "Poor Places" This is a record you really need to own. Buy it, listen to it a few times all the way through and before you know it... you'll be one of us - the believers.

[kleph]

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The dB's - Stands for Decibels / Repercussion

Any casual reader of this list will have gleaned by now that I have a certain affininty for what I describe as "pop" music. If there is a mis-maligned genre of modern music this has to be it. For most the term describes a certain fluffy meaningless brand of music churned out by a studio of producers for a mindless public. And that's certainly the case for the worst of the type. But it's a definition that simply falls short.

Good pop music is that undeniably catchy brand of music that you find yourself singing despite yourself days after you heard the record for the first time. It's often well done but not necessarily slick. Sure some of it is mindless but the best of the brand tends to have a message underneath that eventually sinks into your medula oblongatta and refuses to leave. Bands like the Beach Boys, Material Issue and Fountains of Wayne seem to be singing about girls they are swooning over but that's only to the casual listener.

The acme of this genre, for me, is the dB's. Thank God they released these two records (the band's first) together or I'd never been able to choose between them. Every offering they provide on these two albums is a pop masterpiece boasting their trademark jangly guitars and Everly-Brothers-reverse-dive-bombing vocals (as songwriter Peter Hollsapple once described it). Sure they are singing about girls and good times but there is an undercurrent of reality here - they are old enough to know that most relationships end sour and life might be good but it's a pain in the ass not knowing where your next meal is coming from.

This album(s) also boast my hands-down, number one favorite song of all time - the impeccable "Amplifier." It's a super catchy tune with a whip smart guitar line that makes you grove along despite yourself but it's not as bubblegum as it sounds. The "Amplifier" is the last worldly posession of a guy whose girlfriend took everything he owns. Which would be kind of funny except the guy commits suicide in the first stanza. Not as simple as the mindless "pop" you are used to, is it?

[kleph]

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Robyn Hitchcock - Element of Light

In the broad compendium of this musician's almost three decades of work, this album is his most insightful, nuanced and powerful. It bears the raw enthusiasm that marked his early work with the legendary Soft Boys as well as the profound insightfulness (and drop dead beautiful songwriting) that he continues to create today.

But, with Hitchcock, the most important part is the message he is trying to get across and that's never been better explaned by the man himself (although it was a preface for a later album Globe of Frogs). . .

"All of us exist in a swarming, pulsating world, driven mostly by an unconscious that we ignore and misunderstand. Within the framework of 'civilization' we remain as savage as possible. Against the dense traffic of modern life, we fortify our animal selves with video violence, imaginary sex, and music: screw you, mate - here I go! one side, motherfucker! give it to me, baby, as often and as beautifully as possible - eat lead, infidel scum.

"Mostly we contain ouselves. sexual crimes, and private murders are still news (legalized murders, though, such as executions, wars and the systematic deprivation of the helpless, seldom make the headlines). But our inflamed and disoriented psyches smoulder on beneath the wet leaves of habit. Insanity is big business. And vice versa.

"Religion isn't dead either. The antichrist will have access to computers, television, radio, and compact disks. If he walks among us already, the chances are that he has a walkman. I just hope it's not Christ himself, disillusioned after two thousand years in a cosmic sitting room full of magazines and cheeseplants, turned malignant and rotting in despair at the way his message has been perverted.

"My contention is, however - and it's a bloody obvious one - that beneath our civilized glazing, we are all deviants, all alone, and all peculiar. This flies in the face of mass marketing, but i'm sticking with it."

[kleph]

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Big Star - No. 1 Record / Radio City

I firmly believe these two albums were God's ultimate intention when he created guitars. Once again I've been blessed with a single CD containing both the band's groundbreaking albums No. 1 Record and Radio City because I'd be screwed trying to choose between them. There just ain't a song on either that doesn't reach out and grab your attention and, eventually, touch you in a way only the greatest bands can do.

Big Star is an abberation, although they reach deep into the roots of blues, rock, pop and blue-eyed Memphis soul they are completely sui generis. Somehow the strange chemistry between the strong willed artists Alex Chilton and Chris Bell allowed this glorious pair of albums to happen. They created a type of music that simply cannot be replicated or matched but thank God a legion of bands tried. No less than The Replacements' Paul Westerberg once proclaimed "I never travel very far/Without a little Big Star" in one of his songs.

My friend and fellow music connoisseur Mark once said this band is the ultimate example of a band too damn good to make it. The group named themselves Big Star after a supermarket that was across the street from the studio in Memphis where they recorded these two albums. It's the ultimate irony that something this great would never be able to make them famous as their name portended because although they recorded in the early 1970s but it took decades for their audience to arrive.

Today only critics and music enthusiasts like myself know about these guys anymore. Only Cheap Trick's vanilla cover of their classic "In the Streets" as the theme to That 70's Show has given them a modicum of the credit they deserve. But the theme leaves out the parts about stealing cars, smoking pot and breaking streetlights - all the things small town kids do to fight of the horrors of boredom.

Which, in the end, is why this band is really great. There is a sincerity and authentic emotion to every track that makes each piece of music absolutely perfect. Of all the records in this list, this is the one I urge you to seek out and buy. This band deserves it and you do too.

[kleph]

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Prefab Sprout - Two Wheels Good

I've met only a handful of people who even know this record existed but each and every one has been as devoted to it as I am. It was one of the first records I bought on the basis of a music review and one of the few times that it paid off. This record has been a constant companion for more than 17 years and I still love listening to it as much as when I first bought it.

It's a paradox in many ways - a lush melodic daydream that has it's feet firmly on the ground, a lament for love gone bad and a romanticism that somehow things can work out, a soulful pop masterpiece produced by the king of 80s quirkiness, Thomas Dolby. But somehow it all works. The gorgeous harmonies entrance you then drift away like the wasted loves being sung about. The guitar work is brilliantly interesting and complex but not overstated. The lyrics twist and have a sharpness that you wouldn't expect from the gorgeous arrangements of the songs themselves.

The band is probably best known for some of their more eclectic dance beat songs but this record is a complete artistic vision. It always frustrated me as a DJ because the songs don't have the same power when played alone. This album provided my rule about great albums - you don't know the names of the songs because you can't help but listen to it all the way through.

And it gets such a high placement because of the powerful associations it holds for me. I really got into the record when I went overseas to Italy for two months after high school and it became the soundtrack of that strange bewitching time. Interestingly, I discovered it was named Two Wheels Good in the States but in Europe the title was Steve McQueen. When I got back I would bike for hours in the misty Louisiana mornings listening to this album before I went off to college.

[kleph]

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The Pixies - Doolittle

Nothing less than the revolution come to your doorstep. These guys had been biting at the fringes of the alternative scene for a few years when this came out and kicked more ass than anyone thought humanly possible. When Black Francis screams and the band kicks in, it's like a white hot bar shoved straight into the center of your skull. You better believe this baby leaves a scar.

The power ranges from the primitive fury of Black's vocals served up on a hot bed of Joey Santiago's guitars to the raw threatening rumble of Kim Deal's bass puncuated by the stattaco of David Lovering's drumwork. Those ingredients produced pulse pounders such as "Tame" as well as the ultra-super-heavy "I Bleed." And, just cause they can, they threw in the hipper-than-thou-art "La La Love You."

Like I've pointed out with other bands on this list, Doolittle is the most balanced record produced by an emmensely talented band. The early records (which totally rock) have an amateurish quality at times and, conversely, the later records (which totally rock) tend to be a bit too polished. Doolittle is neither. This is a band at the height of it's powers showing a confident assurance but with a just-under-the-surface rawness as well.

And the songwriting was never better as well proven by the patented "kleph cover test." Witness how songs like "Wave of Mutilation" and "Gouge Away" lose none of their appeal and power when slowed down and stripped down on some of the recent collections. How important is this record to me? If I ever make the movie of my life, "Debaser" is the song I'm having played during the opening credits.

[kleph]

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The La's - The La's

It's really hard to imagine a more perfect album than this one-shot produced by The La's. Exquisitely crafted songs, thoughtfull musicianship, and a heaping helping of charisma to top it all off. Throw in a dose of jangly guitars and there isn't much more I can ask of the world. Sure, the cover of "There She Goes" has become an "adult rock" staple but this is one of the few times that's OK simply because it's that fucking good.

The obsessiveness of leadman Lee Mavers eventually caused the band to implode and this to be a singluar testament to the glory of this band - but that's a hell of a lot more than what 99.9 percent of the music industry can boast. It's not without reason that Liam Gallagher said that all he wanted Oasis to be is to pick up where The La's left off. This album is proof that "pop" is not a four letter word; that rock and roll can save your soul and that Lou Reed was right when he said the best thing in the world was the sound of two guitars, one bass and one drummer.

I've got a soft spot in my heart for records that have that subtle ability to sneak up on you and this is the most extreme example I know of. I actually didn't buy it originally way back in the halcyon days of 1990. I instead it was a gift from a girl who was not-quite a girlfriend. I played it once or twice and moved on, leaving the jewel case to gather dust and the girl as nothing more than entry in an old list of addresses i keep in a box in the garage. I took a road trip to Louisiana and this was one of three CDs I had so I stuck it on from Mansfield to Alexandria. By the end of that trip I was a La's addict. There is not a single song I hadn't fallen in love with at some point in time and the whole album had become a part of my life.

[kleph]

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The Jazz Butcher - Bloody Nonsense

A deleriously brillant slab of dead-serious buffoonery. Technically, this is not one of the Butcher's albums, it's a collection of songs from the albums Sex and Travel and A Scandal in Bohemia released stateside. There are drunk Englishmen, death dentists and dead Jim Morrisons floating across this record but beneath the surrealism there is serious business to be had. What more would you expect of a guy who named his acoustic guitar "Lenin" and called his band the "Sikkorskis from Hell?"

What you get is a glorious combobulation of wicked guitar work, satrical lyrics and just plain fun. As the music writer C. C. Dämmerung observed in the liner notes: "the Butcher's axe grinds somewhere along the non-existent fusion between soul music and the sort of dirty pop that failed to make the Velvet Underground famous." Which is not a bad way to spend your life when you think about it.

The Butcher is ranging all over the musical landscape here from the wittily wicked "President Reagan's Birthday Present" that rings true especially today, to the beautiful resignation of "Partytime," to the hauntingly tropical "Human Jungle."While I'm big on all the Butcher's stuff, the inclusion of "Death Dentist" and this version of "Southern Mark Smith" make this offering head and shoulders above the regular releases. If all that were'nt enough you can also find two of the best songs about drinking ever committed to vinyl/CD/whatever.

One thing I really love about this record is it is 100 percent unavailable on CD. Sure you can whip together a burnt CD of these songs (good luck finding them all) but there is just something wonderfully archaic but rebelliously alive when I slap this platter on the turntable. Every scratch hiss and pop is a hearty middle finger to the Gods of mass media that have done so much to kill the music I love. Which is music just like this.

[kleph]

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The Velvet Underground - VU

This is the record that changed my life.

I was well on my way to being a perfectly normal suburban American male. Go to college, get a sweetheart, get a job and the requisite 2.3 kids and set up in a bedroom community orbiting somewhere around a vague metropolitan area. It all went out the window when Lou Reed and The Velvet Underground arrived with different plans.

It has always been a point of pride with me that I discovered the Velvet Underground on my own. I was wasting a bored afternoon in the only record store in town when I came across this interesting black covered album with the arresting image of a VU meter pegging out on the right side. I picked it up with a couple of other records I probably no longer have and went home to discover everything I had been taught in the world had been a lie.

In 1985 Verve records re-released all the the Velvet Underground's old albums and, as a bonus, released this compilation as well. It was the height of irony that as the band fell apart, they finally achieved a level of mastery that far outstripped anything they had ever done before. The early records are important because the broke all the rules, in the later records they are creating new ones. It isn't by accident that two of the band's best known songs "Sweet Jane" and "Rock and Roll" are on the last record, Loaded. A record that was released after even Reed had left the band.

The ending of the band was notoriously messy and there was a lot of confusion with the final recordings. What the record company discovered while remastering the band's albums was the master recordings for an uncompleted "fourth" album that had been lost in the disarray. It became VU which was a well selected offering of these last songs. While a subsequent album Another View also had some gems, it wasn't as tightly edited an album and reeks of filler in several places.

VU is actually a dissertation on the whole of rock and roll. Listening to it I was able to finally understand how the music fits together so well, how each instrument provides it's individuality to every song as well as it's proper placement in the overall structure. It's a subtle concept that took no less than the genius of Muddy Waters to discover it. Here, Reed is taking it the next step forward.

In a way, this education has been the hallmark of Reed's career. His experiments with the Velvet Underground and beyond (even the excrutiating Metal Machine Music) often define the peramiters of rock and roll by showing you what lies beyond and, eventually, even that can be subsumed into the music as well. But it would never have happend if Reed didn't get there first.

Kurt Loder, in his odiously fawning liner notes, points out that Reed spent quite some time in the early 1960s as a record company songwriter cranking out tunes for now-forgotten bands. From this came his relationship with Cale and Morrison that eventually begat the Velvet Underground but it also gave Reed a sharp understanding of the mechanics of his craft - something he set out to glorify by systematically dissasembling.

A critic once said the beauty of Reed's music is that everyone that listens to it tells themself "I could have done that!" but the point is that no, you didn't and - more importantly - no, you couldn't. The three cord simplicity hides a profound turmoil that is all the more powerful because it is so controlled. The dark edges of the Velvet Underground are here and they are somehow all the more horrible when sung with the child-like vocals of Moe Tucker. Nothing about this album is simple. It's genuis is in that it makes you think it is.

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